SpaceX is continuous to make progress on the event of Starship, the biggest rocket ever constructed, with the third take a look at flight Thursday carrying out significantly greater than the earlier two assessments.

The 400-foot-tall Starship rocket lifted off from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in southeastern Texas at 8:25 a.m. native time. Though SpaceX has been creating Starship for years, that is solely the third time the corporate has tried an orbital mission.

After liftoff, Starship proceeded by a nominal — aerospace converse for regular — ascend. All 33 Raptor engines on the Tremendous Heavy booster carried out as designed, and the 2 levels separated round 2 minutes 45 seconds into the mission. Critically, the launch automobile nailed a novel stage separation method known as “scorching staging,” the place the higher stage (additionally known as Starship) lights its engines to push away the Tremendous Heavy booster. The recent-staging method was carried out for the primary time, ever, in the course of the second Starship take a look at flight final November.

From there, the Starship higher stage continued its ascent to orbit. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk congratulated the workforce on X, saying, “Starship reached orbital velocity!”

Starship reached orbital velocity!

Congratulations @SpaceX workforce!!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 14, 2024

The booster executed what’s known as a boostback burn to regulate its trajectory because it aimed to splash down within the Gulf of Mexico — Falcon 9’s booster performs the identical maneuver to vertically land again on Earth — however its engines did not relight for the touchdown burn part. The Tremendous Heavy was subsequently misplaced.

The corporate nailed one other new milestone after it opened Starship’s payload door for the primary time. This functionality is essential for SpaceX’s plans to quickly deploy many a whole bunch of next-generation Starlink satellites. One other demonstration, a propellant switch demo, was additionally accomplished, although the corporate didn’t go into the outcomes of this take a look at.

Propellant switch is an important a part of the corporate’s plans to return people to the moon for NASA. As a part of SpaceX’s plans for that NASA mission, the corporate has settled on a mission structure that would embody greater than a dozen Starship refueling journeys.

Having the ability to refuel the automobile can also be crucial for a future Mars mission.

Starship continued on its coasting part, however after round a half hour the corporate stated it wouldn’t try to relight the engines to proceed with the take a look at. SpaceX didn’t elaborate on the livestream why it determined to not proceed.

As a substitute, they let gravity do its work, and the Earth’s highly effective gravitational forces pulled Starship again by the decrease ambiance. Finally, mission controllers did not reestablish communications with Starship, main SpaceX’s Dan Huot to announce that they’d misplaced the ship: “No splashdown right now, however once more simply it’s unimaginable to see how a lot additional we acquired this time round,” he stated.